• Diving

I'm scared of heights - Daley

Tom Daley is not a lover of heights © PA Photos

Enlarge

Related Links

• News: Daley and Waterfield miss out on medal in Shanghai
  
• News: British Olympic chief relishing 'Ashes' battle at London 2012
  

Britain's Tom Daley heads to Shanghai hoping to defend his World Championship title having made a startling revelation: he is afraid of diving.

The 17-year-old shot to prominence in 2008, when he competed at the Beijing Olympics as Britain's youngest athlete. After a promising showing - he qualified for the final in both the individual 10m platform event and the synchronised competition at the same height - further success followed when he became a world champion in Rome a year later.

Renowned for his appetite for taking on difficult dives, it is easy to assume the Brit enjoys the thrill of standing over the edge of a 10m-high platform. However, Daley surprisingly does not thrive when hovering on a ledge at height, instead fearing what lies ahead "every time I go up there" - a fear he says that "doesn't go away".

"You never know what's going to happen," he told the Times. "So many things could happen."

Still fresh in the mind is the memory of a dive that went wrong in 2009, an incident that left the youngster adamant "I'd never go up there again".

"I landed flat on a dive and I said I would never go up there again. Every time I went up there, I had a blank. I thought, 'I just can't do it. I'll just go down to springboard instead.'"

With the countdown to London 2012 in full swing, Daley has an arduous year ahead, starting with his exploits in China on Saturday. Winning gold next summer remains the ultimate goal, and he has warned his rivals he will not be holding anything back in his bid for glory.

"I'm just going to go in there and gamble everything," he said. "If I don't pull it off then I've always got 2016, 2020 and 2024. That's how I look at it."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.